2017 - THE “WAIT, WHATHAPPENED” YEAR

This year was out of control. I’m shook. I had no idea what was happening half the time, but I’ve come to learn that sometimes you just gotta roll with the punches.

2017 saw the world (not just my own) unraveling. There were natural disasters everywhere. There were political disasters everywhere. And I had a few disasters of my own, but there were some major redeeming moments:

THEWOMEN’S MARCH: On January 21st of this year, I became 1 of 750,000 people who marched in Downtown Los Angeles. We made history. And more so as I’ve gotten older, I think of my younger self – four year old Minh who hadn’t yet learned English, fourteen year old Minh who was trying to figure out how to grow up a stranger in a strange land, eighteen year old Minh who left home for the first time. And I’ve made a promise to become more resilient in becoming the woman these girls needed me to be.

TRAVEL: New York, San Francisco, Bangkok, Paris, Lyon, Barcelona. My soul is full of happiness.

CAREER: I gave a Tedx talk in NYC. It’s something that’s been on my bucket list for a long time so I’m glad I was finally able to do it. I spoke on beauty standards in the industry. The experience as a whole motivated a lot of thoughts for me as a woman of color – and in the rapidly changing arena of the internet today, what are we doing to create better representation for ourselves and how can we lend our voices to be heard.

My shot/rollout for the launch of Urban Decay’s Naked Heat was included in Adweek’s roundup for the most engaging pieces of branded content on social media for 2017.

For 2018, I want to hammer home #SelfCare. I’m not getting any younger and I need to start taking my health more seriously (which is the largest contributing disaster of 2017). I also want to see more of the world. Keeping it simple.

Grateful for the adventures 2017 has brought. Grateful for the friendships I’ve made and maintained. Cheers to another year!